DMV bribes put unsafe drivers on streets

FBI investigation shows how corruption in the DMV could threaten national security

A surveillance camera shows a DMV employee accepting a bribe from a driver's license applicant, as part of a three-month corruption scheme that allowed drivers to bypass driving tests.
Photo courtesy of FBI

A surveillance camera shows a DMV employee accepting a bribe from a driver's license applicant, as part of a three-month corruption scheme that allowed drivers to bypass driving tests.

San Diego  It wasn’t long after the new manager started her job at the El Cajon branch of the Department of Motor Vehicles that she noticed something was wrong.

The passing scores for driver tests just weren’t adding up. The written test and the driving test aren’t usually given the same day. So how could drivers be passing both tests just minutes apart?

It turns out they weren’t. Many of those drivers hadn’t even taken the tests.

Her suspicions launched an FBI probe that revealed a corruption scheme that peddled more than 100 fraudulent driver’s licenses for bribes to DMV employees in excess of $20,000.

The case provides a glimpse into just how easy, and for how little money, official driver’s licenses can be bought and sold, and the potential threat such corruption poses to our national security.

Thirty-one people were charged, from the owner of an El Cajon driving school who masterminded the scam to a DMV supervisor to immigrant drivers who hit the roads with these licenses.

All but one, a fugitive, have pleaded guilty.

For the five DMV employees, it was easy money. For the driving school owner, it was steady business. And for the drivers, many of whom spoke poor English, it was a way around the language barrier and an entree into a successful life in the United States.

U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Bencivengo, who has sentenced several of the players involved over the past several months, has again and again had to hammer home the seriousness of the crime.

“All of the defendants have stood here somewhat shocked that what they did was a federal offense,” she said.

“It’s just cheating the DMV system a little bit, what’s the harm?”

On Friday, she laid heavier responsibility on Jesse Mario Bryan, a DMV supervisor who, when he learned of his employees’ side gig, joined in rather than reporting it.

“People want to trust public officials that they’re doing the right thing,” she said to Bryan. “There shouldn’t be shortcuts so you can put money in your pocket.”

With that, she sentenced him to six months in prison.

“This was the biggest mistake of my life,” Bryan told the judge.

The scheme

The ad in the Arabic Yellow Pages for U.S. Driving School caught Asiel Tomika’s eye.

It promised help getting a commercial driver’s license for less than other shops around town. And Tomika, an Iraqi Chaldean refugee, needed the help.

He spoke little English, and his first attempt at taking the written test had failed. That license was important to him. He was already working as a tow-truck driver, and a commercial license would increase his job opportunities and pay.

Many of the other drivers who went to the school’s owner, Kuvan Piromari, ﻿were in similar situations. Others just didn’t want to bother taking the tests.

Court documents lay out how the scheme worked.

A standard driver’s license could be bought for $400 to $500, while a commercial driver’s license, with special certificates for hauling hazardous goods, fuel tankers or double trailers, went for as much as $3,000. A cut went to Piromari and other recruiters; the rest went to the corrupt DMV workers.

The terms for each client were spelled out in text messages or in clandestine meetings in the DMV parking lot.

Many avoided even stepping foot inside the DMV building. In those cases, the workers would fill out fake test sheets in the applicants’ names and claim in the record that the fingerprinting machine was broken.

The DMV employees would enter passing scores into the computer system and issue the licenses.

Those who needed to take the commercial driving test would be referred to Marco Beltran, a proctor at the Rancho San Diego branch who was in on the scheme.

Word started to spread fast and wide within the immigrant networks.

“One man flew from Dallas, got off the plane, took a cab to the DMV, took a cab back to the airport and flew back to Dallas,” said Daron Borst, an assistant special agent in charge at the San Diego FBI office. “That’s alarming.”

Easy money

For Bryan, the supervisor, it all started with Chargers tickets.

Bryan had started at the DMV in 2000 as a janitor, and by 2011 had risen to become a supervisor of the driving exam proctors at the El Cajon branch.

By then, the scheme had been running for nearly two years, and he was just starting to realize what his employees — Jim Bean, Jeffrey Bednarek and Scott Friedli — were involved in.

The football tickets were hard to pass up. Then came offers of $100 per fraudulent license. It was around Christmas time, and he was fresh off a divorce and saddled with child support and alimony payments, his lawyer said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Orabona said Friday he was motivated by more: “Mr. Bryan got himself tangled in this sort of corruption because he was greedy.”

But the extra cash did sweeten his pay. The average salary of a DMV employee was $39,800 in 2012, according to public data.

Others in the scheme benefitted much more, court documents show.

About $5,000 in gift cards was found during Bean’s arrest. When Piromari was arrested, agents discovered $150,000 in cash. Bednarek, a former corrections officer, admitted to pocketing more than $5,000.

The scheme clearly trumped public safety, court records show.

At one point, Bean texted that he was uncomfortable giving one client a license.

“She gonna kill someone,” he wrote the recruiter. When the recruiter gave him the option to deny her a license, Bean backpedaled. “I need cash so as long as she gets help,” he wrote.

Authorities said putting potentially ignorant, uneducated drivers on the roads, especially in 18-wheelers hauling hazardous materials or fuel, was the most troubling.

“It put our innocent motorists at risk,” Orabona said.

Undercover sting

Once the DMV’s investigations unit started to suspect a larger operation, the FBI was called in.

Undercover agents bought four standard licenses for $500 each during a six-month sting operation. Surveillance footage, wiretaps, DMV records and interviews with cooperating defendants uncovered the scope of the ring.

However, one of the FBI’s first tasks was to identify all of the drivers who bought licenses. Are they who they say they are? How closely did the DMV employees verify their identities before giving them licenses?

Therein lies the bigger concern with corruption at the DMV, an agency of nearly 10,000 employees that provides the baseline official proof of identity for U.S. residents and also holds troves of personal information, from Social Security numbers to home addresses to photos.

“In the world we live in now just to fly, look at what we have to go through to get on an airplane, and we need to make sure the wrong people aren’t getting on those planes,” said Borst, the FBI official.

Given the countries many of the immigrant drivers came from, the countywide Joint Terrorism Task Force was brought in to help verify their identities and check for ties to extremists.

“As best as we can tell, they didn’t have any nefarious motivations,” Borst said of the drivers. “They were trying to get licenses to make a living.”

DMV officials did not say specifically if the El Cajon case has prompted any further safeguards to prevent future corruption.

“The DMV is committed to the protection of our database and is vital to the integrity of the department and security of our customers’ private information,” DMV officials said in response to questions from U-T San Diego. “Further, by removing corrupt employees, DMV further ensures our security and the public trust. Through these investigations, vulnerabilities are identified.”

This scheme could rival one from the mid-’90s, when at least 92 DMV workers were fired on accusations of selling licenses to people who couldn’t obtain them legally.